In our Style Challenge series, we ask some of our favorite bloggers from around the web to surprise us with their ideas for creating a stylish and functional space using Home Depot products as a starting point.

Your front door might be the most important element in creating great curb appeal for your home. Painting the door in bright new color is an easy and inexpensive way to brighten up the look of your home. That’s exactly what Camila from the Effortless Style blog had in mind in her Style Challenge. Here, she shows us exactly how to paint a door, and how to replace the trim on the door. As you’ll see, the results of her easy front door makeover are quite striking.

Imagine my excitement when I opened an email from Home Depot asking me to participate in their Style Challenge that was focusing on outdoor paint. I knew right away what I wanted to take up that challenge. You see, a couple of years ago I painted our front door black, and since we get a lot of direct sunlight, the moulding on the door started to crack and pop off due to the heat.

Here’s what the house looked like before painting the door:

The damage to the door was pretty noticeable:

We were originally going to get a brand new front door, but that meant a lot of labor and hiring someone to do special wood work on the trim. So that plan quickly went out the window. We then realized we could work with what we had. We ordered a new window insert, removed the old trim and picked up new wood to replace the trim.

We had to start by removing all the trim and sanding the door:

Then we primed the door with Kilz and got to work cutting new trim pieces and adhering them on the door with Liquid Nails.

Once that was done we were able to get work painting with Behr Marquee. That’s a new line from Behr that offers exceptional resistance to dirt and fading, which is a must for an exterior door.

Here’s a close up of the paint job and my pretty elephant door knocker:

It’s now a treat to walk into my home:

Are you green with envy?

Camila Pavone is an interior decorator at Effortless Style Interiors in Westbury, New York. Camila believes that good design shouldn’t be a luxury and that everyone should be able to enjoy a space that reflects their true self. She blogs at Effortless Style, her daily design journal.

Style Challenge is a series of posts from guest contributors who aim to bring you fresh inspiration and ideas for your home and garden using Home Depot products as a starting point. Camila received a gift card, but The Home Depot provided no other compensation. The opinions and ideas Camila expressed are her own.

[...] Glam Up Your Front Door: Freshen up the existing color or change the the color entirely. Instead of painting just the front door, add some extra umph by painting the sidelights too. Doing this will give the door more pressence and make it look more grand. If you don’t have sidelights, no worries! You can get shudders that are the same height as your door. The best part is you can purchase them in stock colors or buy them and paint them in a custom color! [...]

What color do you paint the inside of the door then?
I just bought an old 1944 house that has Light Grey wood siding and I am going to repaint the door Red…. There are so many shades of Red out there and I am not sure which color of Red to use. Any suggestions?

My door is actually steel. We simply cleaned it up, sanded where the old pvc trim was and then primed and painted. We reattached the new trim as wood because we figured it would wear better than pvc and not bubble.

You are correct! It was actually on our list to do for the photo shoot on the door, but we had lots of rainy days and simply ran out of time. Hope to tackle it during an upcoming weekend and will post pics on my blog once I do.

It’s a good thing that you only decided to replace the trimmings. That’s the only place where the damage is so it makes more sense than replacing the entire door. Also, you chose a really nice shade of green, and a Behr Marquee too at that.